


hey, catherine. hey.

by smugmaster



Category: SOMA (Video Game)
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen, Introspection, Post-Canon, Simon-centric, Suicide, lotsa weird who's who shenanigans, philosophy kind of??????? haha, simon kills his omicron self but not the wau, takes place a few days after the ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smugmaster/pseuds/smugmaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>simon deals with the aftermath of his fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hey, catherine. hey.

”Hey Catherine,” Simon starts. “Hey.” He knows Catherine won’t answer – the water pressure and his (Raleigh’s?) power-suited hand crushed the cortex chip long ago, leaving a hysterical Simon screaming at a black-and-white error screen to answer him. Hoping that after a while she would come back and say that was punishment for yelling at her. Hoping.

But that’s always been one of Simon’s flaws, hasn’t it? He’s too positive, too laid back, too trusting that what has always been there will remain in its place. That if it leaves, it comes back. It’s always been that way for him. So it doesn’t hurt to try and call for Catherine again. And again. And again. And again.

“ _I can’t be responsible for your goddamn ignorance, YOU FUCKING IDI-_ “

Until she just connects to the screen again and finishes her sentence. Finishes screaming at him for being an idiot. For having forgotten that he’s still one side of the flipped coin. For not having thought about the fact that there’s still only a 50/50 chance of him getting on the ARK.

Duality at its finest. Either you’re on the ARK or you’re not.

Simon takes out the broken cortex chip and sits down on the floor.

Simon Version Four Point Oh. The version that got on the ARK, or what he, Simon Version Three Point Oh, likes to call him: the Lucky One. Does Four ever think of him, Three wonders, about what he left behind? The three other versions that Weren’t That Lucky? Two dead ones, one alive and kicking and despairing. One human, two brain scans on a chip in a diving suit each. Or were all three human?

A sigh slips out of him. This is why Simon Version One Point Oh – he, himself, the Simon that would become Simon Two that would become Simon Three, which is he, himself, the one who would become Simon Four, up in the ARK, whom he _could have been if only he had been luckier_ – never took philosophy in high school.

Ugh. Too. Much. Thinking.

“Catherine, I don’t want to think,” Simon admits. Catherine won’t answer. Catherine is dead. Well, technically alive. Or dead? Her dead, human body is right next to him. Her broken cortex chip is clutched to his chest. But Catherine is also on the ARK.

Simon curls tenderly around the chip. He doesn’t want to think about the ARK. From now on, he decides, it doesn’t exist.

Catherine is dead. The world is dead. Simon, the real, _human_ Simon is also dead. He died back in 2015. The Simon that’s here deep in the Earth’s oceans now, ninety plus years later, is just a carbon copy of another carbon copy. Not the real Simon. Go figure.

Not-Not-Simon walks out of the room, even if he’s too tired to actually go somewhere. He just walks and walks and walks, out of Site Phi, back to the elevator, doesn’t care about the turbulence almost carrying him off somewhere or the anglerfish biting his hand off. As long as they don’t tear Catherine from him.

“You’re all I have left, Catherine,” he says when they reach the elevator. “Ashley, Jesse, Mom, they’re all dead. You’re also dead. You’re all I have left.” All he has left. He almost drops to his knees.

Someone he didn’t even know that well. Had to trust because the circumstances forced him to. If Not-Not-Simon could cry, he would have. Instead he just lets out a dry sobbing breath and lies down on the ocean floor.

So little to have left. And it’s just the husk of a carbon copy of the real thing.

Not-Not-Simon’s dry sobs becomes bitter laughter mixed with somehow wet-sounding sobs, and he curls over to the right side.

He wants to fall asleep and never wake up, like Not-Simon up there at Omicron.

“ _What… what if he didn’t need to wake up?_ ”

“ _You’d do that?_ ”

“ _… I don’t know. Maybe._ ”

So tired.

He wishes it could’ve been him instead.

–––

After he calms down, Not-Not-Simon lays and thinks. He doesn’t hurry his thoughts – after all, he has all the time in the world ( _that no longer exists as he knows it_ ).

Suicide has always been something others have done, never him. He’d been too happy to do something like that. Always “no, never me” when he’s thought about it.

It’s probably how every other teenager that’s kicked the bucket had thought at one point.

Did they also feel like this? Had they also been the loneliest person in the world when they went through with it? If so…

“I understand. I get you. I understand.”

He raises his hand above his (not Raleigh’s) head.

“I understand far too well.”

He doesn’t hear the muffled underwater sparks when he crushes his own cortex chi

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to write something really depressing but that the character it was focused on considered a happy end. it's been a while since i last played or watched a playthru of soma so please forgive me if i got some places wrong or mixed up lol.
> 
> big shoutout to my good friend shizuruu who didnt actually help me write this but to whom i wanted to gift this work but im not sure she would appreciate it... ily and will always be there if u need me<3
> 
> big shoutout 2 to my man jared zeus, who voiced simon. you have the voice of an angel <3
> 
> big shoutout 3 till mina pojkar in frictional games who made this amazing game, and also for deciding to use The Man Jared for simons voice. seriously its a great game but jared as simon was 100000000% on spot please do it again


End file.
